Have you ever noticed how depressing Christmas music is? I mean a lot of it is just so gloomy. Everyone wishing they were somewhere else, with someone else. It's the most melancholy time of the year.
And it really is. I mean for a lot of people the whole holiday season is just the pits. There is nothing like a holiday steeped in family traditions and memories to drive home the point that you've lost a loved one. Even though we stopped going home for Christmas when Katie was a toddler it was still hard the first year we lost Jack, and the first year we lost my dad, and the first we lost my mother, and the first year we lost Ann..firsts are the worst. Though that year we lost Ann was probably the absolute worst. It was only the second Christmas after my mother passed, we lost so many friends that year, and we were still in the middle of the worst of the pandemic, before we all decided to pretend it wasn't a thing anymore...
This year my friends and I are still reeling from Kevin's death. It's only been a month basically. I mean how is it possible it's been a month? How is it possible it hasn't been longer? Both of these feel true. It's been impossible. I hadn't realized how tied we all were to each other on a daily basis. I mean I sort of grasped it, but I wasn't ready for the void that would happen each time I thought about him during the day. It's made me more aware of how often I think of you all.
Which it turns out I think about a lot of you often.
Songs, times of day, weather, clothes, foods...I have memories tied to each of you around those things and so much more. I saw a cool storm moving in the other day and I was driving so I couldn't take a picture and was really bummed because I knew Faye would love it. There was a show about a housing in Las Vegas and I wondered how close the neighborhood was to Sonnya. It's nothing big usually, but there are little things like that with each of you.
I didn't realize how many of you keep me company while I am cooking. I think about Nadine when I'm making something fancy I've never tried before, I hear her voice in my head, "eh just try". I think about Chris when the cats decide to help me. Trying to get my latkes to turn out the other night I thought about Naomi and her "so many latkes" that she forgot to take pictures of and of Dana and her adding bacon. And I think about Kevin when I come up with a random concoction that ends up really great. Which is often.
But now everytime I think "oh Kevin would..." I have to catch myself. Because it's still in that early stage where you forget on one level. It's still not settled in as real.
And that's why Christmas music often lends itself to being depressing. Because so many of our memories around the holiday are tied to our friends and our families. And they are not always with us. Sometimes temporarily, often permanently.
You all know I lost my uncle a few weeks before Kevin. I love my aunt dearly and I know she's facing that horrible first Christmas without him and my heart hurts for her. I know how bad it was for Mom when Dad passed. I can picture those photos from that first Christmas and just how tired and done Mom looked.
While thinking about my aunt and uncle an old Christmas memory popped up. My family is large. For awhile when we were all in New Mexico there could be 30+ people at Christmas. We switched to a White Elephant exchange instead of trying to manage presents for everyone.
So one year Denny got one of the lowest numbers and unwrapped his gift, it was a piece of wood with a line of nuts glued to it. The nuts all had googly eyes and painted faces, there was a banner on the bottom with something like "My Family is a Bunch of Nuts" and he spent the rest of the game trying to convince people to take it from him. "This is a fine handcrafted piece of art. It's got to be worth something." and no takers. "You know this is probably a valuable piece of folk art." Nothing. End of the game comes, everyone is done making their swaps and Denny is still stuck holding that nuts on a branch. He reaches over to grab the nutcracker and breaks open the walnuts. Inside each one was a $20 bill. "I told you it was probably worth more than you were thinking."
Oh he got everyone! It was his own gift he brought and he told us all it was valuable. Very funny.
The next year a new piece of art like that showed up. And please believe there was a mad scramble for it. I watched the glee in my uncle's eyes and thought, "Uh oh, he's going to get you again." and sure enough at the end of the game the person who ended up with it broke them open and nothing... He got everyone again.
I wasn't there the next year to see if it made a reappearance or not. But I would guess it did and that people had to decide if it was worth the chance to take it or not. If I had been there I would have watched him for clues on if it was more than it appeared to be.
I hope this Christmas comes with pleasant memories of those you can't be with.
I hope this holiday season is filled with moments that become those pleasant memories.
I hope we find that Peace on Earth we are all looking for.
Until that happens I guess we'll have to muddle through somehow...
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